Open Learning
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The modern state of higher education has been impacted by many trends and developments that have affected the corporate world and society in general over the past two decades. Information and intellectual property have become products, consumers (whether or services like education or products) demand great flexibility when it comes to time/space, economic and traditional curriculum constraints. The advent of technology has revolutionized higher education, especially where modes of delivery are concerned and the need for increased revenues to afford to compete technologically. These developments have seen a greater cooperation arise between university and corporations when it comes to profits. Adding to these trends, shrinking enrollments, more adult learners, more business demand for on-the-job continuous learning, and other factors have helped create renewed interest and resource investment in the area of open learning. While distance education technology is intimately related to open learning, distance learning is often the mode via which universities provide an open learning program. This is because open learning is more a philosophy or ideology of education than a delivery mode, one that uses the learner as the core focus of structuring and implementing learning systems, “We use the term open learning to refer to an educational philosophy expressed through a move away from traditional face-to-face practice
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ortunities
(Open Learning Australia 1)
The basic premise underlying open education is also the same one which allows opponents of this educational philosophy to claim it is inherently flawed because it suggests that learners known what is best to learn when it comes to their own education. Yet, underlying the open learning approach is a deeper philosophy. The deeper philosophy underlying open education regards the nature of humankind itself. For encompassed in the open learning education paradigm is the affirmation that there are no absolutes of knowledge, no absolutes of human nature, no absolutes regarding the hereafter that would allow for one model or method of teaching to work for the diversity of mankind. Thus, the teacher does not become a source of knowledge or a prescribed way of being for the learner in open education, instead he or she becomes the facilitator, a motivator if you will, that tries to guide each learner on the course that is most appropriate for themselves, not some foreordained model or absolute paradigm that is thrust upon them as if all humans were identical in interests, abilities and capacities for learning, “Normative openness challenges the right of the teacher to be anything more than a fac
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Spaulding Murphy, Learning Australia, Penn University, Diversity Requires, E-mail Web, Wide Web, Employers Produces, Education INTRODUCTION, Meed Merritt, EDUCATION Technology, distance education, education technology, learning education, learning education technology, concept learning, learning environment, learning distance, learning australia, learning environments, distance learning, education learning, distance education technology, national extension college, process history 3, jeffries lewis meed,
Approximate Word count = 5443
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page)
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